Action Now Institute Fellows Leadership Development Program

Posted by Action Now Institute306pc on January 24, 2017

In January of 2017, Action Now Institute is launching the ANI Fellows Leadership Development Program, a grassroots initiative designed to engage, educate and empower our member-leaders to build capacity to organize their communities and identify community-specific issues. The goal for the Fellows Program is to invest in member-leaders by providing training on organizing skills, while assisting them in building a core group of activists from their own affected neighborhoods.

Each fellow has committed to participating in ANI-led organizing workshops, learning various skills such as canvassing, volunteer recruitment,lobbying and public speaking/media skills training. As a mechanism to build out the core of community activists through the program, each member-leader will identify ten members to serve on a local organizing committee that will be tasked with building community awareness on topics and policies that have an impact on our neighborhood residents. These neighborhood committees will be charged with not only identifying the issues and opportunities for improving conditions, but also building relationships with allies and local elected officials to provide solutions for the pain of systemic disinvestment of resources from black neighborhoods on the South and West sides of Chicago.

We look forward to what this initiative will bring forth, both in empowering our member-leaders, and in watching them empower their community members. Our neighborhoods have many problems, but we are hopeful that our fellows program will be a catalyst to bringing solutions and the changes we need.